Love Your Body Day is celebrating its 15th year of empowering events. Since 1998, NOW Foundation’s annual event promoting positive body images has taken place each fall — this year on Wednesday, October 16. The Love Your Body campaign was created as a response to media portrayals of women, particularly in advertising, that promote narrow and unhealthy ideals of beauty.
Through Love Your Body Day, women and girls are encouraged to talk back to the media, to demand images that reflect the full spectrum of womanhood in all its many sizes, colors, ages, ethnicities, abilities and gender presentations.
Events across the country are as diverse as the women who organize them. They include blogathons, fashion shows, pickets, educational forums, athletic events and more. They all have one goal in mind — to challenge media messages that constantly tell us we don’t measure up. Thousands of us each year say: We’re just fine, thank you!
On October 16 at 2 PM EST, the National Organization for Women Foundation will be hosting a Google hangout in celebration of Love Your Body Day 2013. Moderated by NOW Membership Vice President Chitra Panjabi, our panel will consist of The Feminist Wire co-founder and Virginia Commonwealth University professor Tamura Lomax and Colorado College’s professor Heidi Lewis.
One of the best ways to counter the barrage of unhealthy body images we are bombarded with every day is to share our own stories about how we love, honor and nurture our real, imperfect, awe-inspiring, sexy, scintillating bodies. So here is my story.
How I Learned to Love My Body
My first memory of shameful body awareness came when I was about 12 years old. My father was teasing my mother about her weight. Then he reached over and squeezed my knee and said, “I like my women pleasingly plump.”
Until that day, I had never thought much about my body type. I was a finicky eater as a child, and until I had my tonsils out in the third grade, I could barely choke down a peanut butter sandwich at lunch.
But somewhere around adolescence, genes and hormones kicked in and I started to round out. Looking back at old photos, I was not even close to being overweight. But I saw the hand-writing on the wall.
My mother is a very attractive woman, but she has a tendency toward being somewhat soft and round. It seemed she was perpetually on a diet…and perpetually cranky because of it.
Starting in my teen-age years, I joined her in trying just about every diet that came around. We would eat nothing but eggs and grapefruit for days on end, then go reward ourselves with a hot fudge sundae from Friendly’s.
Over the years, I have tried them all. Low-fat, low-carb, South Beach, Atkins, Weight Watchers…you name it, and I have been on it.
My weight has gone up and down over the years, but like my mother, my set-point seems to be somewhat softer and rounder than current standards of beauty would approve.
Finally, in the last couple of years, I have learned a new approach to eating that has me off the yo-yo dieting trail. I have learned to love healthy, low-glycemic foods, and to lose my cravings for refined sugar and carbs.
Here I am at my current weight. As you can see, not really overweight, but nowhere near being model-thin. But I have finally learned to love my body just the way it is.
The white belt you see in the photo is the key to my newly-found body love. At the age of 60, I completed my white belt training in NIA, a movement practice that draws from disciplines of the martial arts, dance arts and healing arts.
According to the founders of NIA, “It empowers people of all shapes and sizes by connecting the body, mind, emotions and spirit.”
For the first time in many years, I feel in tune with my body. I appreciate my feet and legs for supporting me and giving me the freedom to dance. I appreciate my spine for letting me curve and be fluid in my movements. I appreciate my arms and neck and hands for allowing me to express myself with grace, strength and flexibility.
For me, the joy of movement is the key to loving my body. I wish every young woman in the world would find this joy and hold onto it as a shield against all the negative body-talk they will encounter in their passage to womanhood. And I applaud NOW for being proactive in providing a space for women to share their feelings and their stories in a positive, supportive environment.
